Festival Foods Case Study

Executing New Initiatives Required a Modern Telephony Solution

Elevating the customer experience by treating store guests as part of the family is ingrained in the Festival Foods culture. The grocery chain invests in technologies that ensure PCI compliance and make guests feel that employees care about them and the products that its two dozen stores sell. Plans for eCommerce, and a centralized call center to take phone orders, are on the drawing board.

Added Functionality Eliminates Expensive Support and Service Delays

Festival Food’s legacy PBX solution was cumbersome and antiquated. Functionality was limited to making basic phone calls and it was unable to integrate with the POS system. Only one company in the area could handle support. The system also didn’t have a user manual, so basic operations were confusing. The phones had nine buttons—push them in the wrong order and calls were dropped.

The cost of support was also a concern. Resolving any technical issue was expensive, whether the work was done onsite or remotely. Most of the time it was handled onsite, so the company incurred travel charges as well. The support organization also didn’t offer 24/7 support. If the phones went down, the issue could not be resolved until the next day, which was unacceptable to this customer-focused company.

DEPLOYMENT OF THE SHORETEL SOLUTION WENT FLAWLESSLY. IT WAS VERY AFFORDABLE. SHORETEL PROVIDES ALL OF THE FEATURES WE NEED NOW, AND IT LEAVES US THE OPTION TO ADD CAPABILITIES LATER.”

Mike Nomland, IT Director,
Festival Foods

ShoreTel Integration with Key Systems Makes Good Customer Service Great

The ShoreTel VoIP UC phone system was implemented across the majority of Festival Food locations in less than a year. By integrating with Festival Foods’ POS, the company is now able to provide faster customer service.

“We integrated the phone system with radio handsets in our stores. When issues arise, managers and employees can answer the call right on the floor,” explained Festival Foods IT Director Mike Nomland. “We also tied the phone system into an overhead paging network. Employees push one headset button to talk on one frequency and another button to talk over outside speaker or microphone.”

Every Festival Foods location has its own switch because of the need for low latency. ShoreTel VoIP UC also enables the company to deploy a SIP trunk and PRI allocations to multiple sites.

“That would’ve been more complicated with other, more expensive VoIP systems,” said Nomland.

Since Festival Foods offers Wi-Fi for customers and accepts credit cards, security is extremely important to comply with PCI DSS regulations. The entire network must be secure on every device, the guest network and production network. ShoreTel ensures that every component of the system is bulletproof.

ShoreTel Solution Exceeds Expectations

Festival Foods chose ShoreTel VoIP UC because it was less expensive than other vendors, and offered more flexibility and redundancy. With ShoreTel’s easy-to-use, intuitive interface, there was no need for extensive training either. ShoreTel’s reputation for excellent security and regular updates has given IT peace of mind.

“Deployment of the ShoreTel solution went flawlessly. It was very affordable. ShoreTel provides all of the features we need now, and it leaves us the option to add capabilities later,” said Nomland. “I’m very happy with the decision to go with ShoreTel.”

CHALLENGE:

Festival Foods’ legacy Samsung PBX lacked basic features such as directory services, soft phone capabilities and call transfers. The company wanted a telephony system with advanced features and applications that would help enhance its customer experience.

SOLUTION:

A ShoreTel VoIP unified communications (UC) system with more than 500 ShoreTel IP phones.